<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Out of Our Minds and Out of Time by NormalIsAbnormal</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220838">Out of Our Minds and Out of Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NormalIsAbnormal/pseuds/NormalIsAbnormal'>NormalIsAbnormal</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Simonverse | Creekwood Series - Becky Albertalli</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:34:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220838</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NormalIsAbnormal/pseuds/NormalIsAbnormal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years down the line, Garrett receives an invite to Cal and Nora's wedding, leading him to reflect on what led to this moment.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cal Price/Nora Spier, Garrett Laughlin/Cal Price</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Out of Our Minds and Out of Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this in about an hour and a half from start to finish. It's also the first fic I have finished in a long time.</p><p>Title is from 'Falling in Love' by McFly</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I read the first lines of the invite. I was half surprised to receive it, as I had never been that close to either Cal or Nora. I hadn’t exactly been friends with either of them at school, more so being a step or two away from them. I had only really been close to Bram and Eisner. But there again, it wasn’t all that surprising. Of all the streets in all the suburbs in LA, they had to move in down from me. It had surprised all of us that morning at Starbucks.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After everything, they were the only people from home I saw on any regular basis. And that made it worse. I had moved out to LA straight out of college, following a developer job at a startup that I’d been told about. I got lucky with it because it filled the niche in the market and went from strength to strength. I even had the money for rent without needing roommates, even if it was just a studio apartment. I had moved to avoid the discomfort of constantly running into people from home and having to continue hiding parts of myself. That got thrown up in the air when they moved out here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I saw them both occasionally throughout breaks in college, but not regularly, and only ever in a group. Then I’d seen them at the various celebrations, like when Simon and Bram got married. But that was it until they moved. He was now working at an independent theatre, as a stage manager and a playwright. She was doing something with music. I was just trying to go about my life, and ignoring anything at that had happened in high school. They lived almost exactly halfway between my apartment and the nearest metro station. I had considered going in the opposite direction to the next nearest metro station, but that was about three times the distance and there wasn’t a Starbucks on the way there.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The conversations never went beyond general small talk with Nora, and I didn’t know how much she knew. With Cal, they were always infinitely more awkward, because we always refused to acknowledge that fateful summer between junior and senior year. It had been an incredible and intense summer, but after a few weeks back at school, he decided he didn’t want to be with a guy who couldn’t come out. That had been fair enough, but it had always left something of a hole in me. I felt like it was my mistakes that had caused the breakup, and it had left me with something of a hatred for myself at seventeen for letting the best person that had ever happened to me walk out of my life.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>I continued down the invite and saw the date. I let out a sigh of relief, I wasn’t even going to be in the country. It was the same weekend as a planned work trip to Europe. I took a breath and picked up my phone, I scrolled down to Cal’s contact and hovered my thumb over the call button, but stopped myself, there was so much more that I wanted to tell him, and I couldn’t trust myself not to just blurt it out. I exited my contact list and opened my Gmail app, and sent a message to the email on the invitation.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Thank you for inviting me to your wedding, but unfortunately, I will not be able to attend, as I have a work trip to London at that time and we are unable to reschedule it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Apologies, and Congratulations,</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Garrett.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Out of our minds and out of time,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wishing I could be with you</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And to share the view</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We could’ve fallen in love</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>